I've got a cracking idea for a screenplay. It's about a writer called Mike who has supposedly written the greatest novel of all time, although he keeps stalling on getting the thing published. When a group of internet geeks get a hold of the one and only copy of said novel, Mike realises he only has eight hours to reclaim it before the geeks do the unthinkable and finally get it published.

CosmoKramer wrote:I've got a cracking idea for a screenplay. It's about a writer called Mike who has supposedly written the greatest novel of all time, although he keeps stalling on getting the thing published. When a group of internet geeks get a hold of the one and only copy of said novel, Mike realises he only has eight hours to reclaim it before the geeks do the unthinkable and finally get it published.

CosmoKramer wrote:I've got a cracking idea for a screenplay. It's about a writer called Mike who has supposedly written the greatest novel of all time, although he keeps stalling on getting the thing published. When a group of internet geeks get a hold of the one and only copy of said novel, Mike realises he only has eight hours to reclaim it before the geeks do the unthinkable and finally get it published.

Life is long - why start too early? Also, unpredictable things seem to keep happening to me, so I'm still stocking up on experiences. So far I've got a multi-cultural office sitcom set in 5 cities in 3 different countries also involving our hero having a kid, realising his partner's nuts and becoming a single parent. With flash backs to being a kid in the country during the 80s and 90s. And commuting. Lots of commuting. It's a noir thriller.

Just wrote a scene where one of the more sick and twisted characters in the film, sways drunkenly at the mouth of an alleyway, at night, singing 'Like A Rolling Stone' by Bob Dylan. Upon reaching the chorus, he takes out a gun from his pocket and starts shooting blindly into the alleyway. On the third chorus a homeless man yelps from the darkness as he's struck by a bullet. This character smiles to himself, takes a mental note of how many he's killed, congratulates himself and drives off.

F-in awesome. Having some trouble getting across the main character's stress at times though.

Um... I shouldn't have said anything (I just got excited about starting it!), as I actually can't tell you. Sorry. Just pretend I didn't say anything, and that I'm working on a bog-standardly normal original screenplay.

I'm going to try and put this in as non-hostile a way as possible, because I really don't mean to be, but have you ever actually been published? That sentence reads like you've started a spec script that's been pre-emptively sold to a major studio and it's a bit...presumptuous if it's just something you're writing for fun. When you say can't do you actually mean don't want to?

As for writing, I suffer from being insanely excited about it for a month or so and pumping out loads of stuff, then getting fed up and pushing it all to one side. Trying to start a screenplay at the moment (again) after reading Killing on Carnival Row: http://www.sendspace.com/file/lu36ri. It's fantastic. I can't stop thinking about it but at the same time, part of me hopes it never gets made. There's so many pitfalls; it really could end up being another Van Helsing shitfest if handled badly.

I've had the sort of idealistic desire to write something for years now and in the past few months I've had an idea in my head slowly developing. I've never really done any proper creative writing before so don't expect it would be up to much but it would be nice to get it out of my head so I don't have to think about it all the time.

I just don't really have any idea how to go about actually starting something and I don't know if this is something lots of first time wannabes struggle with but the formatting really intimidates me

Part of me wants to do a lot of research around the setting first as it's something I'm really interested in and can only imagine it would help. But then I also kind of just want to get going.

I had to take a long break from writing after I had the worst writer's block. I literally found myself unable to write anything, no ideas were forthcoming at all.

I went away and realised that I was putting too much pressure on myself to get it right first time, instead of just getting the story written and worrying about formatting and whatnot afterward.

Since then, I've written the entire first chapter, one later chapter (which can be read on the related blog in my sig) and am currently nearing the end of chapter two. Not bad for only a couple of weeks' work!

The first time I saw a ghost was on my 16th birthday. It wasn't how I'd imagined it to be - it didn't go "wooooo" and it didn't look like a dude in a sheet. It looked just like a normal human being but transparent. I wasn't scared either; it actually put me pretty at ease. I began to imagine what it would be like to be a ghost. Surely having no body would give you some sort of freedom or something. The old cliche about being able to walk through walls might be a good start. But until I become a ghost I'll be happy with just thinking about what it might be like. Can ghosts drink beer? Can ghosts drink anything? Can they eat? Can they have sex? If they could it'd probably be really cold. Can ghosts fly? It'd be awesome. I've never been bungee jumping. I'd want to try that before I become a ghost. That and skydiving. Like bungee jumping without a rope.

I'd love to able to write but I seem to get so far into something before realising I've subconciously ripped something off from somewhere else, getting irritated and deleting it from my hard drive. Any tips for writing original stuff?